Today, Wednesday 5 July, the NHS marks 75 years of service. Since the NHS was founded here in Trafford, Greater Manchester on 5 July 1948, it has always innovated and adapted to meet to needs of each generation. When it was founded, the NHS was the first universal health system to be available to all, free at the point of delivery. 75 years on, the NHS’s founding principles remain as relevant today as they were then.
On 1 July 2022, NHS GM became one of 42 integrated care boards in England responsible for making decisions about health services in our local areas. To mark our one-year anniversary, we’re sharing case studies across our social media to show how working together is making a difference.
This includes a home monitoring service for people on the waiting list for cardiac surgery at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. They are working with the Greater Manchester and Eastern Cheshire Cardiac Clinical Network, community healthcare provide FCMS, and Docobo, a specialist in remote patient monitoring, to provide equipment for patients to monitor their blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and heart rate at home, and send their results directly to a clinical team to review.
In Hyde, they’ve launched ‘Healthy Hyde’ after the primary care network (PCN) was tasked with improving the health and wellbeing of the most deprived 10% of its population. The PCN partners with organisations such as housing, domestic violence, voluntary and community groups, the local council, housing shelters and statutory services to help with employment, housing, health, pre and post-natal education and support, nutrition, social care and loneliness. The network works alongside the local homeless population, refugees, asylum seekers, food bank users, children struggling in schools, and parents with young children.
And we’re continuing to achieve the highest rate for dementia diagnosis in the North West through our Dementia United programme, raising awareness of the symptoms and working with partners, including medical professionals and charities, to put people living with dementia and their families at the heart of our work to improve the quality of care and support we provide across GM.
We’ll be sharing more case studies over the coming weeks so keep a look out on our social channels.
In March this year, our ICP strategy was launched at the Greater Manchester ICP Board and published on our website. The strategy explains how, through working together, our health and care services will help to make Greater Manchester a place where everyone can live a good life; grow up, get on and grow old in a greener, fairer more prosperous city-region.
As we mark our one-year anniversary, we have published a set of materials to make our strategy more accessible and easier to digest, bringing the 50-page document to life, including:
- a 16-page summary PDF, which gives an overview of the role of the ICP, the challenges we face and how we will be responding to these challenges through our Greater Manchester Model for Health, our six ‘missions’, and monitoring our progress
- a leaflet, giving the headlines from the strategy and signposting people to find out more information
- a slide deck (PowerPoint presentation) to help explain the role of the ICP and our plans for the next five years
Translated versions of all the above will also be available on request, and easy read versions are in development. They will be available on our website and in print within the next couple of weeks. This will be followed by publication of our Joint Forward Plan.
To mark the NHS 75th anniversary of the NHS, buildings, historic monuments and other high profile sites across the country are lighting up blue on the evening of 5 July. There’s also a special service at Westminster Abbey with staff and volunteers attending from all over the country where the winners of the NHS national photography competition will have their pictures displayed.
For more information about NHS75 go to the website: england.nhs.uk/nhsbirthday/about-the-nhs-birthday/
Happy 75th birthday to the NHS and happy 1st birthday to us!